Fish pee

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This is one of the reasons I am so anal about water changes.
Freshwater fish are constantly urinating, so by letting a tank sit for a week, or worse a month without getting rid of a majority of old water (urine), is a bit ridiculous to me, because its not jut about nitrate, but about all the other components of urine. And although beneficial bacteria and (some) waters buffering capacity( alkalinity) are OK at removing some urine, especially in heavily stocked tanks is not possible.
Whenever I see pH or alkalinity dropping, I know uric acid is becoming problematic.
 
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duanes said:
This is one of the reasons I am so anal about water changes.
Freshwater fish are constantly urinating, so by letting a tank sit for a week, or worse a month without getting rid of a majority of old water (urine), is a bit ridiculous to me, because its not jut about nitrate, but about all the other components of urine. And although beneficial bacteria and (some) waters buffering capacity( alkalinity) are OK at removing some urine, especially in heavily stocked tanks is not possible.
Whenever I see pH or alkalinity dropping, I know uric acid is becoming problematic.
Click to expand...
^^^^The gospel^^^^
I always cringe a bit when I read how people dictate w/c based solely upon nitrate level
 
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I would be interested to know if all these hormones stop in the water until water change day and if they do what effect these have on the fish, if the fish use them to communicate but there is a back ground level already would that mean the messages aren't understood as well as in the wild. For example fish not reacting as quickly to a dominant aggressive fish possibly resulting in more physical confrontation.
 
duanes said:
This is one of the reasons I am so anal about water changes.
Freshwater fish are constantly urinating, so by letting a tank sit for a week, or worse a month without getting rid of a majority of old water (urine), is a bit ridiculous to me, because its not jut about nitrate, but about all the other components of urine. And although beneficial bacteria and (some) waters buffering capacity( alkalinity) are OK at removing some urine, especially in heavily stocked tanks is not possible.
Whenever I see pH or alkalinity dropping, I know uric acid is becoming problematic.
Click to expand...

Your the perfect person to ask this. I've always been told fish release a lot of hormones in their urine which builds up and leads to stunting etc. It seems like the main focus is nitrates which can be removed by other means. Nitrate removal is important, but what about the other elements released?

I ask because I'm getting into SW again and all the equip for nitrate removal just to reduce wc's bugs the crap out me. Example 10% weekly wc if you use skimmer reactor etc. I love smaller frequent wc's or massive wc's depending on the sensitivity of the fish etc etc which isn't economical with the cost of SW.
 
I use nitrate readings as a barometer of sorts. There are tons of dissolved organics that you're removing when you do water changes, but nitrates are a measurable thing that can help you determine how long it's been since you've changed water. For instance, if I ask someone their nitrate reading and they tell me it's 40ppm, that tells me either A) it's been a long time since they did a water change and they're overdue, or B) their tank is likely overstocked which would require more frequent water changes.

In both of those scnenarios, it's likely that there would be other organics in the water that were reaching high levels too.

Water changes also replenish minerals that the fish have absorbed from the water, and those are used in growth (fin and bone development). So water changes not only remove bad stuff but they add good stuff. I think that could be a more likely cause of stunting than too many hormones in the water.

Bottom line: if you want big, healthy fish, keep doing frequent and adequate water changes. Your fish will thank you.
 
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Well that's applicable in FW, but I'm more concerned about SW applications. How come all this builds up and effects fish in FW. However you can get away with much much less in SW for some reason. I know your starting with pure water to begin with, but over time it seems like all the buildup in hormones etc would get to overwhelming levels...but it doesn't even with miniscule wc's on a weekly to biweekly basis.

For instance my jag is in a 125, but I've had a big SW puffer in a 125 as well. How come he needs huge wc's, but the puffer only needs about 10%. The skimmer and LR can't possible remove the hormones etc. The only difference I see is the tap water which in my case is around 400+ tds vs rodi.
 
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I wonder how riverine species use this method.
Surely the urine just goes straight away in the direction of the flow?
 
I believe that some of the hormones and pheromones fish release are a cause of stunting.
It is one of the reasons (back in the "old days" )when people assumed fish would only grow to the size of a tank, and when water changes were thought to be bad, many did stop growing.
I also believe that beyond water changes, foam fractionation also helps removes some of these organic substances, and one of the reasons salt water keepers.use it, because water changes are so much more expensive in a salt water tank.
I use it in fresh water tanks, and ponds. It is a bit more difficult to perfect in fresh water because of fresh waters lack of density, but works fine, if enough agitation is produced to fractionate the air water interface. Most salt water fractionators are too wimpy to work in fresh.
I do "not" however believe fractionation is a panacea, for freshwater tank.
below is a vireo of a DIY fractionator working on a small koi pond I had.
 
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